Silver Maple Tree
Gratitude 2/24/2025
I am grateful for the gift of a new day.
My heart is filled with gratitude for the many blessings I have.
I will appreciate the small joys and express my thanks in all circumstances.
Let my attitude of gratitude bring joy to others.
Spring is springing here in rural Ohio. There are red buds on the big old maple tree right by the house. I am so grateful for living another year with this tree.
This tree is at least 135 years old. Born in 1955 when my grandparents lived here, I have “known” this tree all my life. It is a silver maple, a species of maple native to the eastern and central North America, one of the most common trees in the United States. It’s a relatively fast-growing deciduous tree and can reach almost 100 feet tall. It has red buds in the spring and green leaves that turn pale yellow in the autumn before they fall.
My grandparents moved here when my grandmother, Charlotte Orland, inherited the farm from her mother Ida May Metzger in 1948. My grandfather “retired” here to be a farmer after working as an engineer at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton during WWII.
The property needed a lot of work. My grandparents remodeled the house, put in indoor plumbing in the bathrooms, built a barn, dug a pond and stocked it with fish, and planted an apple orchard.
One day an old man drove up the long lane. He introduced himself as a “Blackledge” the people who had owned this property before my great grandparents bought it in 1905. He was really happy to see this silver maple tree. He told them that his mother had planted it in the late 1800s and being a small boy, he pulled it up. He got in trouble for that. But his mother was able to replant it. Here is a picture from 1905 that my mother’s cousin, A.C. Metzger, who was born here on my birthday August 1 in 1915 left me. I think you can see our silver maple as small tree to the right of the house. You can see a buggy to the left of the house.
This precious tree kept growing while different families occupied the house. After A.C.’s family moved next door, another cousin, Clinton Metzger, raised his five daughters here. My grandparents lived here from 1948 to 1973 when my grandmother died and my mother, an only child, inherited the property. My second cousin, Martina, was the caretaker for a short time after Grandmother died. Stewart and I moved here in the summer of 1975 and then our friend lived here during the winter when we went back to college in Massachusetts to finish out my senior year.
When we moved here in 1976, we thought we would “live off the land” for a few years and then move to a city. Somehow we never left, and now it has been almost 50 years. Time flies. It doesn’t matter if you are having fun or not!
This silver maple has been growing this whole time even though many of the people it shaded have passed on.
It was standing when my sisters and I came to visit our grandparents in the 1950s.
The tree was standing when we got married in 1981 and people danced the hora in front of it.
It was standing when our girls were born and as they grew up.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night (with moonshadows)…or wind or ice have toppled the tree.
Branches have broken off, and we have had to trim it from time to time.
These days I love watching birds, especially red cardinals that really stand out, resting in the tree.
It is so comforting to know this tree is standing by me. I am so grateful for that.